


The Seeping Floor

by Dienda



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen, Halloween Challenge, Mental Institutions, mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 01:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5111612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dienda/pseuds/Dienda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old grey bus slows down and stops next to him. The door opens with a long whine and the driver squints at him. “You in trouble?”</p><p>“My car broke down,” Rust shouts above the white noise of the storm. He reaches for his badge but remembers he left it on the kitchen counter along with his gun. "I just need a phone to call a tow truck.” </p><p>The driver smiles. “Hop in.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seeping Floor

In ’97 Sophia’s birthday falls on a Monday. Rust asks for the day off a week in advance and tells Marty he’s driving out to Houston. He hasn’t seen her grave since they buried her ―her small white coffin, the first shovel of dirt hitting the wood like a hammer blow to his chest― and he thinks maybe now he can look at it without going insane.

She would have turned ten.

Rust has dinner at the Hart household on the first day of the year; he declined the invitation to their New Year’s party so Maggie made him promise to stop by the next evening. The girls are at their grandparent’s house and Rust, Marty and Maggie sit at the kitchen table eating leftovers from the night before and talk easy about everything and nothing, the kind of conversation Rust didn’t thought even possible two years ago.

“You need anything you call, alright?” Maggie says in a soft voice when he stands to leave, her hand around his forearm. Rust nods without a word and follows his partner to the front door.

“Drive safe, you hear me,” Marty murmurs and clears his throat, scowling down at his shoes.

There’s something gentle about both man and wife tonight; they’re not exactly treating him with kid gloves but as Rust walks to the truck and waves goodbye the iridescent colors of a soap bubble tremble and float behind his eyelids. He’s oddly grateful, relieved that someone knows about Sophia and this grief he keeps close to his chest.

“See you Tuesday, Marty.”

 

Rust drives into Houston on Sunday evening, the sun has burst against the skyline and bleeds up in shades of red and bruising purple. He still knows these roads by heart, after leaving the highway he follows his memories across town until they lead him to a small house with its small garden, right on the bend of a street corner.

The front is painted white now, it was light blue, back then. Yellow clouds of pansies line the windowsills; a bicycle and a football lying on the lawn spell the existence of a young boy with nothing but a couple of bushes to protect him from the road.

Rust parks the truck across the street and spends the night nursing a handle of scotch and staring at the little house, thinking of what could have been. More birthdays. Family trips. Having the job of a normal man instead of being forced to wear a hollow face and getting hooked on dope. A bigger house. Maybe another child. A measure of happiness. He watches the lights beyond the windows, the dark figures that move and have a life behind the curtains and he imagines it’s them: Rust, Claire and Sophia doing homework and having dinner and getting ready for bed. Sophia asks for a bedtime story and she’s getting too old for fairytales but Rust sits next to her against the headboard and picks up the book on the bedside table and reads to her. Claire peeks in the door, toothbrush in hand, and tells them not to stay up late; then she smiles that full, wide smile of hers, throws them a brown-eyed wink and disappears again, humming down the hallway.

In the truck, in this life, Rust can hardly breathe around the lit embers inside his chest.

Next morning, Rust washes his face and changes his shirt in the bathroom of a convenience store before driving to the cemetery. This is another path that’s burned into his core, the narrow trail of tombstones that leads to the small marble square that bears nothing but her name. He wonders ―fears― if he’s gonna run into Claire, if she visits often or, like him, can’t bear the thought of being here. Rust kneels on the grass and presses his forehead to the black stone. He wants to tell Sophia something, everything, to dig through the ground and hold her in his arms but he only grasps at the marble and whispers _I love you so much_ until his mouth is dry and his voice rips into nothing but a sob.

 

He leaves the graveyard in the late afternoon, eyes bloodshot from crying and the knees of his jeans stained green from the moist grass. He gets on the truck and drives away in haze, not paying attention to the road until he sees the sign welcoming him back to Louisiana. The sun is going down and it’s starting to rain; his stomach burns, reminding him he hasn’t really eaten anything since Maggie’s food.

He’s thinking about stopping at Lake Charles for dinner when the truck starts jerking and sputtering. Rust pulls over and goes to check what’s going on. When he opens the hood a cloud of smoke hits him in the face and the rain hisses and steams when it lands on the hot surface of the motor.

Rust goes back to the cab to search for his flashlight. The rain’s staring to pick up and even with the light he can’t see enough to figure out what’s wrong. He gets behind the wheel again, with any luck the truck can go a few more miles, far enough to find a mechanic. He gets the key into the ignition and turns. It won’t start. “Fuck.”

Traffic’s not heavy but Rust knows he can’t be too far from the nearest town, maybe he can hitch a ride to the next city, get a tow truck and maybe call Marty to let him know what’s up.

He locks the truck and stands at the edge of the road, arm stretched and thumb out, rain soaking him through. Over a dozen cars drive by without acknowledging him; he’s resigning himself to walk to the nearest building or just spend the night in the truck when an old grey bus slows down and stops next to him.

The door opens with a long whine and the driver squints at him. “You in trouble?”

“Was drivin’ back to Baton Rouge when my truck broke down,” Rust shouts above the white noise of the storm. He reaches for his badge but remembers he left it on the kitchen counter along with his gun.

The driver shakes his head. “We ain’t goin’ that far.”

Rust leans in, droplets of water falling off his chin to land on the rubber floor. “’s alright. I just need a phone to call a tow truck.”

The driver smiles then. “That we can do, hop in.”

“Thank you so much.” Rust gets on the bus, feet squelching with every movement.

The door wails closed and they start moving. There’s a man in the seat right behind the driver, he motions at Rust to take the empty seat across from him. The man reaches up to the overhead rack and pulls a folded towel down, hands it to Rust.

“You’re dripping.”

“Sorry, thank you.” He drapes it around his shoulders and starts rubbing at his hair. “Thought I was gonna have to spend the night in my truck, wait the rain out.”

“Fuckin’ weather,” says the driver with a chuckle.

“Where you headed?” asks Rust, fishing the sodden cigarette pack from his shirt pocket.

“Just outside Sulphur, close to Lake Charles.” The second man reaches up again and offers Rust a thick blanket. There’s something about the man that bothers Rust but he can’t put his finger on what. The guy’s tall and wide-shouldered, hair cropped short; there’s something vaguely military about him but his voice and his manner seem deliberately soft. He motions at the pack of smokes. “Mind if I bum one?”

“Least I can do.” Rust hands the pack over. It takes his lighter a couple of tries to spark a flame. He lights one cigarette for himself. The driver shakes his head when he offers the pack. “I hope I can find someone willing to drive out after dark.”

“Looks like it’ll take us a while longer, with the rain,” says the second man, then he motions to the rest of the bus. “Think we should let them rest.”

Rust peers over the tall backrest of his seat. About twenty men are scattered on the rest of the seats, most are sleeping, wrapped in blankets like the one around Rust’s shoulders, but some are staring at the foggy windows with a lethargic expression. They’re probably night workmen on the way to the job. Rust pulls the blanket tighter around himself and settles down. He’s so exhausted too, like the strain of the two previous days is falling on him like a physical weight, too drained to even feel hungry anymore. He starts blinking slower and slower, until his eyes stay closed.

 

Someone shakes his shoulder. Rust startles awake and finds the driver leaning over him.

“We’re here.”

Rust nods and stands up to get off the bus, feeling heavy and clumsy. The sky’s completely dark now, he decides he’s just gonna call a taxi and get a motel room. Phone Marty with the news that he won’t be on time tomorrow.

It’s still raining, just a drizzle now. The second man is right by the bus under an umbrella, when Rust tries to give the blanket back the man shakes his head. “Keep it on, just hand it to someone when you’re inside.” The guy steps back on the bus as the engine roars to life again. “Hurry before they go in, phone’s at the main desk.”

“Thanks.” Rust gives a drowsy wave and walks to join the group of men. They’re in the yard of an old building, a tall stone wall all around the property; the place looks like an old school building, or a hospital. It’s not until he’s close enough to see the orderlies that he realizes why the other man made him uneasy, why the other passengers were asleep. This is a mental hospital.

Rust feels his stomach drop and his skin break into goosebumps. He looks back, the bus is leaving through the iron gates; his first impulse is to run after it, make for the open road. He keeps walking toward the building though, tells himself he’ll only be here a few minutes; after all, it’s not the first time he’s been to an asylum after North Shore. He thinks again of his badge and his gun left on the kitchen counter.

“Excuse me.” He walks past the line of dazed-eyed men and approaches one of the orderlies. “I hitched a ride with these guys. My car broke down in the highway and your driver said I could use your phone to call a taxi.”

“Sure, phone’s right inside, but you need to get in line first.” The orderly points him back to the group of men.

Rust shakes his head. “I’m not a patient, I just need to use the phone.”

“You still need to get in line, man. Don’t disrupt the group, we can’t stand in the rain all night.” He touches Rust’s arm, nudges him gently. “C’mon.”

Rust thinks to argue but goes to stand behind the group. All the men are still bundled up in the blankets, like him, heads bright with the drizzle.

The orderlies herd them into a wide entrance hall with a checkered floor, there are two sets of stairs, one on each side of the room and a front desk by the far wall. A group of nurses approaches the men and starts collecting the blankets. Rust can see now they all have white tags stuck to the front of their shirts, their smudged names on them. He leaves his blanket on the floor and walks to the desk.

“Excuse me, miss,” he says to the older woman sitting behind the counter. “I had car trouble and was told by your bus driver that maybe I could use your phone to hail a tow truck.”

The woman throws him a fleeting glance and goes back to the files in front of her. “You need to wait your turn, the nurses will sort you out.”

“I’m not a patient. I’m a police officer,” he says, knowing he doesn’t have his badge to show for it. “I’m only here to use the phone, my car broke down out in the highway.”

She nods and gestures to the rest of the men. “Someone will see you in a minute, dear.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Rust says bluntly. “My car broke down, I hitched a ride here. I’m not one of your patients, I just wanted to use the phone to call a tow truck or a taxi.” He shakes his head and steps back. “Y’know what? If you can’t help me that’s fine, I’ll be on my way.”

The staff is still handling the men, nurses with clipboards talking low and sending patients up their corresponding set of stairs. Rust crosses the hall and is just opening the door when a hand grabs his arm.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asks an orderly in a deep, booming voice. The man’s around seven feet tall, built like a bull. His manner is outwardly calm but Rust can see a flicker of brutality in the sharp line of his mouth.

Rust shrugs the hand off, feels a wave of frustration and fear spill down his marrow. “I’m not a patient―”

“If you’re on the list there ain’t two ways about it, boy,” the man says with what’s supposed to be a kind smile.

“That’s my point. I’m not on your list.” Rust points to his shirt “See? No sticker.”

“Hey.” Another orderly comes over, hands up in front of him. He reaches out to touch Rust’s shoulder. “Let’s sit down and sort this out.”

Rust jerks back. “Don’t touch me. I’m not one of your patients and I’m leaving, now.”

“Let’s talk about it.” The man tries to grab him again.

“Get your fucking hands off me, I’m not one of your crazies.” Rust notices two more nurses moving closer, surrounding him like a pack of wolves. He takes a step back. “I’m a police officer.”

“I don’t see no badge,” sneers the giant.

“You can call State CID out in Baton Rouge and ask for Officer Cohle.” Rust doesn’t care if he has to sprint to the gate and climb the fucking wall, he’s getting out of this place right the fuck now. He throws the door open and is about to run out when he’s pulled back by the fabric of his shirt and thrown to the floor.

“Let go of me, you motherfuckers.” He struggles against the hands keeping him down, kicks and squirms and manages to land a punch in someone’s temple. “I just needed to use the phone. I’m police, get your fucking hands off me.”

There’s a flurry of footsteps and yells, and Rust feels the sharp stab of a needle in his thigh.

“You can’t do this! You can’t fucking do this!” he shouts as they pick him up and carry him up one of the stairs, still fighting. They take him to a room at the end of a long highway and strap him to the bed. “You can’t―don’t do this to me.”

He feels the drugs spread in his blood, taking the fight out of him, filling him with the thick tar of stupor. Before he loses consciousness, Rust sees a black shadow forming in the corner of the room, it grows like an oil spill, bigger and bigger. It crosses the narrow floor and starts crawling up the wall until he can see it has a head and a body, two elongated arms and a pair of thin legs that stretch and waver like the tail of a kite. The shadow man slithers across the ceiling until he’s mirroring Rust’s position strapped to the bed.

Rust shuts his eyes to stop seeing it but doesn’t have the strength to open them again.

 

It’s early in the morning when Rust wakes up on the narrow cot. His eyes focus on the rectangle of light painted on the far wall; there’s a single narrow window, high above the bed. When he tries to move he’s reminded of the restraints tying him to the bed; he looks down at himself and sees he’s wearing a hospital gown; panic floods his mind and he starts tugging on the straps, pulling his wrists and legs as hard as he can.

“Hey!” he calls out.

A nurse comes in, clipboard in hand.

“Where are my clothes? Get me out of here.” He pleads as he trashes harder, unable to control himself. “You can’t do this. You can’t keep me here.”

Two orderlies come in. “Hey, man, we need you to calm down.”

“I’m not meant to be here,” Rust says in a whisper but he doesn’t stop trying to get out of the restraints. He sees the needle coming this time, twists away as far as he can but it pierces the skin of his arm. “No. No.”

The drugs don’t knock him, they leave him floating somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, constantly sinking into quicksand. At moments he’s convinced he’s back at North Shore, that he never got out and his brain’s invented the memories of the last three years, another one of his hallucinations. The move to Louisiana, Marty, Maggie, the guys at the bullpen and working cases, just dust on his corpse as it rots away in a dark corner of Lubbock. Maybe this is his punishment for being a bad man, for failing as a father and as a husband, the one place where he truly belongs. Time seems to crawl and flash by at the same time, days and weeks gone by while he struggles to break the surface of this nightmare state and open his eyes.

 

A nurse checks on him a while later, shines a pen in his face and takes his pulse. Rust is mostly awake by now. After the nurse leaves, one of the orderlies comes in and starts undoing the straps. The name embroidered on his scrubs reads Guidry.

“Think you can stand?” he asks gently. Rust nods and lets the man help him sit up. “Let’s clean you up. The doctor’s gonna come and see you real soon.”

Rust realizes he pissed himself. The orderly doesn’t mention it, just helps him up and half carries him out the room ―another orderly is waiting outside the door and follows a couple of steps behind them― and down a different set of stairs from the ones ending at the main hall.

The showers are a long line of open stalls in a big hollow room flooded with light from the wide windows set high against the ceiling.

“Can you do it yourself?” asks Guidry when Rust shrugs the gown off and limps to one of the stalls.

Rust nods. He twists the handle and a stream of cold water falls on his head and at least it manages to dispel the last threads of drowsiness clinging to his temples. He washes himself with the bar of soap while the two orderlies watch him. When he’s done they hand him a threadbare towel and let him dress himself in a pair of scrub pants and a sweatshirt.

“Where’s my stuff?” he asks, reluctantly putting on a pair of slippers.

“In storage.”

They walk him back to the room and bring him a tray of food: orange juice, jello, oatmeal and scrambled eggs. He eats everything out of hunger, clinging to the hope that explaining his situation to the doctor will clear this mess.

The orderlies instruct him to sit on the bed and reach out to put his wrists back in the restrains.

Rust shakes his head and hugs himself. He can’t sound like a reasonable man while shackled to the bed. “You don’t have to. I ain’t gonna do anything.”

“Just while the doctor’s here.” Guidry tugs gently on his arms until the leather cuffs close around Rust’s wrists.

Ten minutes later an orderly brings in a chair and an old, white-bearded man in a lab coat comes in and sits by Rust’s bedside.

“Hello,” the doctor says affably. “I’m the director of the hospital. You raised quite a ruckus last night, young man,” he chuckles. “I wish I knew more about what brought you to us but we seem to have misplaced your file, should be faxed over soon, it’s not the first time this happens after a big transfer.”

“I know why my file’s missing.”

The director takes a silver pen from his shirt pocket and scribbles something in the small notepad in his hands. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not meant to be here,” Rust begins. “I apologize for my behavior last night, doctor, but I’m really not one of your patients. I’m a police officer, I work at State CID’s headquarters out in Baton Rouge.” Rust hesitates a moment before telling him his full name and his badge number. “You can check. I was driving home from Houston when my truck broke down and I hitched a ride on your bus.”

The doctor nods and starts writing again. When he’s done he taps the pen against the clipboard and stares at Rust. “What were you doing in Houston, if you work in Baton Rouge?”

Rust tightens his jaw. He won’t mention Sophia inside this place. “Personal matter, that ain’t important.”

“And your car broke down. What was wrong with it?”

“I don’t know, it was raining and I couldn’t see properly. That’s why I need a phone, my truck’s still out there.”

“Of course, of course,” says the doctor with a smile and Rust has the certainty the man’s just humoring him. He’s just a patient caught in a delusion who needs all the help he can get. “We’ll take care of that.”

“Look―” before he can say another word Rust sees a black stain ooze from beneath the closed door. His skin breaks out in goosebumps as the shadow man crawls over the metal door and comes to rest on the wall, right behind the doctor like a grotesque shadow. Rust lowers his eyes, looks down at his lap to wait the hallucination out. “I just want to make a call.”

“Have you been institutionalized before, Rustin?” the director asks suddenly, with another reassuring smile.

Rust’s gut tightens but he shakes his head. “No, sir.” He clears his throat and sits up straighter. “Again, this is just a misunderstanding. I’d be real grateful if you’d just let me use your phone, get a tow truck, call my partner.”

The doctor nods and stands up, tucking his pen away. “Not yet, all in good time.”

“Wait―” Rust hasn’t felt like this since Sophia died, since the first time his pop pushed him out into the snow and told him not to come back until he’d caught something to eat; so fucking helpless and scared, too furious to do anything but cry and lash out. “You´re not listening to me! Come back, you son of a bitch! I’m not supposed to be in this fucking place!” Half a dozen orderlies and nurses rush into the room. His legs are free so Rust kicks and shouts at them. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Assholes! Let me out of here! You can’t fucking do this to me, I’m police! I’m gonna fucking kill you, you can’t fucking do this!”

It doesn’t take them long to subdue him. They grab his legs while the giant gets an arm around Rust’s neck and squeezes hard, choking him; then there’s the telltale stab of the needle in his thigh.

Rust starts going numb, his head both heavy and light in the giant’s headlock; he hears the voices around him like they’re coming from a dream. His head lolls back onto the pillow and he tries to tell them again but the words are too low to be heard. “I wanna go home, please. This can’t be happening to me.”

 

They hook an IV to the back of his hand, it keeps his eyes half-closed and his mouth dry. In a way, Rust knew it would come to this, he lived it before at North Shore. Being strapped to a bed for days on end, covered in shit and puke when the withdrawal shakes got too bad; howling and screaming and cursing at everyone until his voice broke down into a raspy howl, until his rage deserted him completely. Then he started going with the tide: sleeping when they told him to, eating when they fed him, nodding when they expected him to nod. He can do it again; if the truth gets him nowhere he’s going to play along until he gets a chance to break free. North Shore allowed phone calls, this place has to do it as well. He can’t escape if they keep him drugged and tied to the bed all the time. If he starts acting like a rational man they have to treat him like one eventually.

With any luck Marty’s already looking for him, if only to drag him back to work. Though Rust can’t get his hopes up in that front; his partner’s probably canvasing morgues and ERs, two states worth of local precincts. No, Rust has to help Marty find him.

So he stops yelling and struggling. He washes when they take him to the showers and speaks when spoken to, he tells the doctors he’s feeling better and eats his shapeless meals and all the fucking jello in the world because he needs to keep his strength. They stop giving him the antipsychotics after a couple of days and put him on a dose of barbiturates so low it almost makes him laugh; he used to take more Quaaludes on those first few months after the move to Lousiana and the Ledoux case.

Finally, they let him go out into the yard where some patients help keep the flowers and a vegetable garden, and into the crafts room full of men and women reading and crocheting and making flowers out of tissue paper.

He’s at a table by the window, drawing with the thick crayons that are the only thing he’s allowed to use for now. Rust feels the orderly, Guidry, approach but doesn’t look up from the bird he’s sketching.

“That’s very good,” the man says peering over Rust’s shoulder. “What kind of bird is that?”

Rust shrugs. “Just a warbler, they’re all gone south right now.”

Guidry pulls the chair next to him and sits down. “Y’know, if you keep up the good behavior we’re gonna move you to the main dorm real soon. You’ll be able to shave and help out in the garden, have real color pencils.” The guy’s been real kind to him but his insistence on talking to him like he’s a dumb child makes Rust want to slam his head against the table.

“I’d like that.” He says instead. After a couple of moments of hesitation Rust clears his throat and looks at the other man with what he hopes is a pathetic expression. “I really need to phone my friend―” He hasn’t brought up the subject since that first day with the director.

The orderly tenses. “I can’t let you―”

“Please.” Rust picks a shade of cornflower blue and takes a white sheet of paper, he starts writing Marty’s name in big, bold letters. He writes the direct line to his desk and his home number, he even jots down his beeper and his own desk number, knowing his partner will answer it if it rings. “He takes care of me. He doesn’t know where I am, he’s probably very worried. You can call him for me.” He folds the paper into a small square and pushes it across the table. “I just need him to know I’m safe. Please.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Please.”

Guidry takes the paper and walks away. It’s been twenty three days since Rust got on that bus.

 

Two days later, after breakfast, two orderlies come to fetch him from his room.

“You’ve got a visitor.”

Rust’s stomach clenches, he hasn’t spoken to Guidry again and he’d convinced himself it was a long shot, giving the orderly Marty’s number, that the man would rather ignore Rust than risk losing his job. But he called and Marty’s here and he’s gonna take Rust home.

They lead him to a small room on the ground floor, nothing but a table bolted to the floor and two folding chairs. He feels his heart racing, hammering in his chest so hard he can barely keep himself from pacing while he waits.

When he finally does walk in, Marty stops dead in his tracks and gapes at him. Rust has an idea how he must look, glass-eyed and gaunt, three weeks’ worth of stubble on his jaw.

“Jesus, Rust.” Marty approaches the table slowly, not looking away from him.

Rust’s never been happier to see his partner but he doesn’t let it show, he’s very aware of the two orderlies standing on opposite corners of the room and the giant keeping an eye on them from the door. “Hey Marty, good to see you, man.”

“Good to see―” Marty lets out a huff. “Goddammit, Rust, I filed a missing persons report, put a SVR on your truck; found it in Alexandria, no tires. Some assholes had used it to rob a convenience store at gunpoint.” He rubs his face, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck, Rust, I thought I was gonna find you in a goddamned ditch somewhere.”

“Close enough.” Rust murmurs.

“Are you feeling better? This Guidry guy told me what happened, that you were delusional when you first came in and the doctor says―”

Rust feels like he just got punched in the gut. “What?”

“I mean, are you better now? Is it helping? If you had a―I can hold things up at the office while you’re here.” Marty’s expression is the one he uses when they’re talking to a victim’s next of kin.

“You believe that I had a psychotic break, Marty?” Rust spits, leaning away. “You think I fucking belong here?”

“That ain’t what I―”

“Guess you’ve been waiting for this moment since we fucking met.” Rust thinks he’s never been so angry in his life, so fucking betrayed. He flips his chair against the wall. “Fuck you! Why did you come then?! Get the fuck out of here, I don’t wa―”

The giant throws him down, his face and shoulder slam hard against the floor. Rust tries to get back up but the other man digs a knee into his spine and shoves his head against the concrete. Someone else holds down his kicking legs and fingers dig into his forearms. He can taste blood.

“Get your fucking hands off him!” He sees, lopsided, Marty’s shoes rush to him and stop abruptly as two orderlies move to hold him back.

“Sir, you need to leave.” They push him towards the door.

“I ain’t going anywhere. Rust!”

“You’re distressing him, sir. You need to leave.”

Marty’s legs disappear down the corridor.

“Fuck you!” Rust yells.

The giant digs his knee harder into Rust’s spine. “You want me to get some turpentine, boy?”

Rust goes limp. He squeezes his eyes shut and doesn’t struggle as the orderlies stuff him into a straitjacket and fasten the buckles at his back.

The orderly snarls a laugh. “Yeah, I fucking thought so.”

It never happened to him but he saw it once, back at North Shore. An older man started throwing things in the activity room, tried to climb on a bookshelf; two nurses tackled him to the ground and injected turpentine into his legs. The man started writhing like a fucking worm in a hot pan, shrieking so loud they had to sedate some of the other patients after they locked him up in solitary. Rust saw him in a hallway a couple of days later, pulling himself by his elbows, legs still useless with the chemical.

They pick him up like a rag doll and drag him back to his room, he can feel a hot trail of blood running down the side of his face. They hook the jacket to the foot of the bed and have a nurse clean his temple and his split lip. A doctor comes in, talks to the orderlies without even acknowledging him, tells them to leave him in the jacket for a couple of hours and signs an order for an IV bag of lorazepam and haloperidol.

“Now you sit here a while and think if you wanna throw any more tantrums,” the giant announces before Rust’s left alone.

He glares at the bricks on the far wall, jaw clenched and eyes burning. He feels wounded, like Marty put a knife between his ribs and gave it a twist. Rust trusted him to see the truth, to know him better than that.

A black drop of oil starts bleeding through the floor in front of him, growing towards him. A reminder that he belongs here after all.

He screams. A raw, bestial sound that fills every inch of the room and spills out the tall window. By the time the nurses rush back in he’s sobbing quietly, spit and snot dripping from his chin onto the white canvas.

 

Rust wakes up in the restrains, needle and cannula secured to his forearm. He watches the changing light coming from the window and decides there’s nothing he won’t do to escape this place. He no longer has the will to play the long game. He considers the yard, the outer wall, too tall and even to climb, too well guarded from what he’s seen through the windows. He could harm himself, slit his wrists or maybe make himself sick, something bad enough that they have to take him to a real hospital, once there he could ask for help from someone who will actually listen. Now, with a cool head, he realizes Marty couldn’t have guessed the whole truth if he only knew what Guidry and the director told him. But Rust pushed him away and, without Marty, he has no one else on his side. Perhaps one of the orderlies, Guidry or someone else; he’s willing to bribe them or fuck them, let them do whatever they want to him as long as it gets him away from here.

 

The day passes slowly, in the thick fog of the medication. They remove the IV, take him to the showers and bring him a tray of food he doesn’t even touch. Then, in the early evening, two orderlies drag Rust out of bed and take him back to the visitor’s room.

Marty’s sitting in one of the folding chairs, face haggard and eyes a shade of blue that tastes like crisp morning air; he has his badge and gun displayed on his waist this time; the orderlies throw him nervous glances but say nothing as they watch from the corner of the room.

Rust feels his heart in his throat. “Marty―”

“I’m sorry, alright?” Marty holds up a hand. “This is a fuckin’ apology. Jesus, Rust, I just thought―visitin’ your girl after so long, maybe you needed some help or―” He lets out a heavy sigh. “You know the shit we’ve seen.”

Yes, they’ve seen husbands and wives struck mute and blind with grief, sons and daughters wailing like wounded animals, parents ripping their hair off and clawing at their own faces after hearing their children were laid out on a morgue slab.

Rust meets Marty’s eye and shakes his head. “It ain’t like that.”

“This doctor guy swears up and down he can prove you walked in here of your own free will. Rust, did you sign anything?”

He was so fucked up, those first few days, he can’t even remember if they made him sign any papers. But even if it happened he sure as hell didn’t do it willingly. “I fucking didn’t, Marty. I only came to use the phone because my truck broke down.”

Marty nods, no hesitation.

“Tell me exactly what went on.” Rust explains from the beginning, a story he’s repeated over and over without having anyone believe a word of it. When he’s finished, Marty’s face is red and pinched with anger. “I’m getting you out, right fucking now.”

They don’t let him follow Marty to the director’s office but an hour later a doctor comes into his room with an abashed expression and a discharge form.

Marty’s waiting for him in the entrance hall, a plastic bag with Rust’s belongings in his hand.

He doesn’t know if Marty pulls him in but Rust crashes into him, wraps his arms around the other man’s chest so tight it must hurt. His breath hitches when Marty cups the back of his head and holds him. Rust feels he’s gonna fucking howl if his partner says the right thing but they just stand there in silence for a too long moment until he manages to let go and step back.

“Got some clean clothes in the car, you wanna change?”

He shakes his head. “Just get me the fuck out of here, man.”

 

“Fuckers wouldn’t let me back in, had to threaten to charge them with obstruction and kidnapping of a police officer.” Marty says when they’ve got a few miles between them and the hospital.

Rust is looking at his own reflection in the overhead mirror. The shadows under his eyes are dark like bruises. His hair’s too long, curling in every which way and the stubble on his cheeks is not too far from becoming a full beard. There’s a long scrap on his right temple, the skin broken and purpling around his eye. His lower lip’s swollen and split in a long line held roughly together by dried blood.

“Got your truck at the station,” Marty’s saying now. “It’s still scratched to hell but it’s got new tires.”

“Thanks, Marty.”

Marty reaches into the glove compartment and hands him a pack of cigarettes.

“You’re my fucking hero.” Rust digs into the bag with his clothes, fishes his wallet and his lighter, the keys to the truck. He lights a cigarette and lets it hang between his lips as he lowers the window and throws the whole bag out, boots and all. Marty doesn’t say a word. Rust takes the sweatshirt off and flings it out as well, followed by the scrub pants and the fucking slippers.

The car swerves to the other side of the road before Marty pulls it back to their lane.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Rust.” Marty throws glances at him from the corner of his eye, scowls at the bruises scattered on his body, fading and new, the yellow-green marks left by the restraints, and the puce handprints strewn across his arms and legs. He reaches out and touches the pad of his thumb to a black bruise on the jut of Rust’s hip bone. “I’m really goddamned sorry, alright? Motherfucker sold me a whole different story when he first called. I’m sorry I believed him.”

Rust shrugs. “It’s alright. Should’ve explained myself before flipping the fuck out.”

“Y’know, we can sue their asses, send them a fucking inspector. Fuck, Rust, if you want we can get a few gallons of gasoline and burn the whole place to the ground.”

Rust let’s out a huff of laughter. “I’ll think about it.”

He reaches for the folded clothes in the back seat, recognizes them as Marty’s. He doesn’t put them on, just keeps them in his lap while he smokes and stares at the sinking sun.

“I was in a mental hospital, after Port Houston,” Rust says without looking away from the pipes of a distant refinery.

“What?”

“The department’s idea of rehab.” Rust looks down at his lap, rubs a patch of flannel between his fingers. “Spent four months in there. It wasn’t all bad ―too bad― but I was definitely not keen on repeating the experience.”

He doesn’t get an answer; silence falls between them like the changing colors of dusk. Rust can practically feel Marty’s mind working, arranging pieces of Rust’s image that hadn’t had a place before.

“You’re staying at the house with us or I’m coming home with you.” Marty says at last, he’s glaring at the rearview mirror, jaw tight. “I ain’t asking, it’s for my own fucking peace of mind, alright?”

Rust doesn’t argue. He doesn’t want to be alone right now ―hell, he doesn’t want to be alone ever again but that’s another fucking matter altogether. He puts the clothes on, masks the smell of raw fear and confinement on his skin with the lilac scent of Maggie’s detergent. It’s enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Halloween Challenge at [True Detective Prompts](http://truedetectiveprompts.tumblr.com/). For the prompt: "Rewrite your favourite horror short story with Rust and Marty (or any other TD character) as the protagonist."
> 
> Based on Gabriel García Márquez's short story [I Only Came To Use The Phone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Pilgrims#I_Only_Came_To_Use_The_Phone)


End file.
